Sunni Kurds want Islamic law as basis of regional Iraq constitution News
Sunni Kurds want Islamic law as basis of regional Iraq constitution

[JURIST] The Kurdistan Islamic Group and Kurdistan Islamic Union [Global Security backgrounders], both major Sunni political parties in Iraq, announced plans to campaign against a draft regional constitution for Kurdistan that does not draw its "principal source of legislation" from Islam. The two groups want the regional constitution to be in line with the second article of the 2005 national constitution [JURIST news archive; text, PDF] that recognizes Islam as the official religion and states that Islamic law [Wikipedia backgrounder] represents a fundamental source of law.

The draft regional constitution has not been released by parliament yet. Some local human rights groups have expressed concern over including Islamic law in the document, saying that it will restrict women's rights, while other human rights groups are optimistic because the vast majority of people in the northern Kurd region are Muslim. IRIN has more.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Georgia became first US state to ban lynching

On December 20, 1893, Georgia became the first state in the Union to pass a law against lynching, making the act punishable by four years in prison. The statute was not particularly effective—read the text of the 1899 pamphlet Lynch Law in Georgia by anti-lynching activist Ida Wells-Barnett.